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The decline and fall of the hit instrumental song

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Re: The decline and fall of the hit instrumental song

#111

Post by PopAlongKid »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #102

I can only recall a few songs in my lifetime that was instrumentals that were hits. Apache by The Shadows The good the bad and the ugly from the same movie Ballade for Adeline - Richard Clayderman and lastly Crockett's Theme from Miami Vice. Also Kenny G was big in my days but then they started with using guest vocalists on their music.

If you remember those songs, then surely you must have heard many more from the same era. TFA totally glosses over the increase in instrumental popularity during the 60s and 1970s.

Two big factors completely missing are 1) decline of Top 40 AM radio, and 2) decline of 7-inch 45 vinyl singles.

I remember the following instrumental hits of the era, they may not have reached number 1 but were definitely played a lot on air and were in my parent's (and then my) record collections. I'm sure there were many more.

Classical Gas - Mason Williams.

Telstar, Walk Don't Run, many more - the Ventures

Tequila - various

Midnight in Moscow - Kenny Ball

Work Song, Taste of Honey - Herb Alpert

A Walk in the Black Forest - Horst Jankowski

Alan Parsons - I Robot (FM radio)

Close to the Edit - Art of Noise

Music to Watch Girls By - Bob Crewe Generation

Let there Be Drums - Sandy Nelson

Topsy, Big Noise From Winnetka - Cozy Cole

Cast Your Fate to the Wind - Vince Guaraldi

Stranger on the Shore - Acker Bilk

Bonanza - Al Caiola

Like, Long Hair - Paul Revere and the Raiders

Theme from A Summer Place - Percy Faith Orchestra

Re: The decline and fall of the hit instrumental song

#112

Post by skrebbel »

redwall_hp wrote: post #110
skrebbel wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More update cause I'm geeking out now: Another way to look at it is Phil Spector needed 4 entire Beatles to churn out hit record after hit record. Today someone in his position (a person in a studio with lots of gear) (or just a laptop even) can arguably make an entire hit record on their own, without anyone singing or playing an instrument. Is that really a different role? In a way it is, because you're no longer ma…

Instrumentalists and singers are just instruments a producer plays. And now we have DAWs and VOCALOID. Just as the Beatles would be no more than a skiffle band playing bars without George Martin, Stock-Aitken-Waterman is responsible for huge 80s hits from Dead or Alive, Rick Astley, Bananarama, etc..

The Beatles did write their hit records themselves though. Lots of people helped making it Sound Real Good but unlike Rick Astley they did write the songs.

Not that it matters, in my opinion, a good song is a good song. But sometimes the producer plays the singers and instrumentalists and sometimes it’s more the other way around.

Re: The decline and fall of the hit instrumental song

#113

Post by FiatLuxDave »

lapcat wrote: post #9

I don't know if these anecdotes prove anything, but two of my favorites, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, had popular instrumentals in the late 80s/early 90s. And one of my non-favorites, Kenny G, is one of the best-selling artists of all time, more than 75 million records.

If you like Satch and Vai, you might want to check out Angel Vivaldi if you haven't already.

Re: The decline and fall of the hit instrumental song

#114

Post by nixass »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #64
nixass wrote: post #60

Carbon Based Lifeforms anyone? Solar Fields? Solar Fields did soundtrack for Mirror's Edge for example. So many good composers doing electro/synth instrumentals nowadays but aren't mainstream, which might be good thing

I adore those artists, transports my mind to another place like no other music. However I can’t help but feel a little disappointed this stuff didn’t catch on more, like they should have inspired 1000 followers to invent new sub-genres by now. Maybe they did and I just don’t know where to find it.

YouTube comments under those songs are sometimes treasure

Re: The decline and fall of the hit instrumental song

#115

Post by robenkleene »

skrebbel wrote: post #73
onionisafruit wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Favorite producer seems equivalent to favorite big band leader.

"Producer" means at least two things. In electronic music, it's commonly used for the person actually composing and arranging a track. It's used to differentiate from a DJ, who plays other people's music and doesn't "produce" anything. You can install FL Studio on your laptop, mess around a bit, and you're a producer (not a very good one probably, but the word does not imply quality). In most other genres, "producer"…

> It's used to differentiate from a DJ, who plays other people's music and doesn't "produce" anything.

Just to be clear, this isn't the etymology of "producer" in the electronic music sense, it's from the second definition you described: The person doing the recording.

This is because electronic music is largely created largely using tools that were designed to be used on recorded music in the studio such as delays and reverbs. Electronic musicians are called producers because they use the recording studio itself as an instrument (along with synthesizers and samplers). Hip-hop makes this distinction extremely fluid as the person recording the vocals is often the same person making the backing track.

Re: The decline and fall of the hit instrumental song

#116

Post by Night_Thastus »

spicyusername wrote: post #98

There are plenty of well known, all instrumental, musicians these days. Almost certainly more than there've ever been. Most just don't show up on things like Billboard because that ceased being a representative way to track musical consumption a long time ago. There's an overwhelming amount of content now, across all mediums, and there's a lot of "dark matter" that isn't well represented in the mainstream. It's like…

Agreed. People say that "X isn't around anymore" but what's really happening is that X doesn't dominate pop culture/isn't the Big New Thing anymore.

It's become effortless for people to get into artistic creation, including music. So it's everywhere, you just have to dig a bit to find it.

Re: The decline and fall of the hit instrumental song

#117

Post by tibbydudeza »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #111
tibbydudeza wrote: post #102

I can only recall a few songs in my lifetime that was instrumentals that were hits. Apache by The Shadows The good the bad and the ugly from the same movie Ballade for Adeline - Richard Clayderman and lastly Crockett's Theme from Miami Vice. Also Kenny G was big in my days but then they started with using guest vocalists on their music.

If you remember those songs, then surely you must have heard many more from the same era. TFA totally glosses over the increase in instrumental popularity during the 60s and 1970s. Two big factors completely missing are 1) decline of Top 40 AM radio, and 2) decline of 7-inch 45 vinyl singles. I remember the following instrumental hits of the era, they may not have reached number 1 but were definitely played a lot on…

Moments of Love - Art of Noise - how could I forgot that one.

Re: The decline and fall of the hit instrumental song

#119

Post by porkbeer »

lelag wrote: post #107

I'm surprised nobody's mentioning Mike Oldfield who was topping the European charts in 1974-1975 with Tubular Bells and Hergest Ridge. Both mostly instrumental album with 20min+ tracks... Totally unimaginable now.

Go watch the docu on his life. He was an incredibly interesting man, who went through bizzare changes after recording those hits.

Re: The decline and fall of the hit instrumental song

#120

Post by porkbeer »

kgwgk wrote: post #78
3pt14159 wrote: post #40

> But if you asked a random person on the street to name a clarinet player, I suspect most people couldn’t come up with one, let alone one known for their good looks. The space of potential sources for inspiration has exploded. How many people had a favourite typographer or open source software contributor or racecar driver or whatever else a hundred years ago? Music is different, sure, as others have commented, but…

"But if you asked a random person on the street to name a clarinet player, I suspect most people couldn’t come up with one, let alone one known for their good looks." If they could come up with one there are good chances that it would be Woody Allen. Definitely not someone known for their good looks.

Wouldnt it be kenny g?
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